The Princess and the Pirate
by Clarke22
Summary: Clarke sneaks on a pirate ship and gets ill. Bellamy is a pirate and finds someone who is not supposed to be on his ship.
1. Chapter 1

It had been four weeks already on the ship. Clarke had snuck on it to be away from her problems, but now she's got a bigger one. She was ill. Her gums had begun bleeding and her limbs were aching and stiff. As someone who knew quite a few thing about medics, she knew what it was. It was scurvy. Of course it had been inevitable, she didn't have much vitamins in the last few weeks. Hell, she barely had gotten anything to eat. She was starting to think that maybe sneaking on a ship that belonged to a pirate had been a bad idea. Had it all been really worth it? Of course, now she was away from her problems, but were these problems worth dying for on the middle of the ocean. She should have thought this through. Her life was not that bad before. It had been bad, but not this bad.

As a woman she had not been able to go into medical school like she wanted, nor do anything else of any usage. All she could do was marry a nice rich man and give birth to lots of children. She did not want to do this, she wanted to do something important and not be the property of some man. Her parents thought otherwise, they had a high status and their daughter could not cause a scandal. So after she put up a fight her father decided that she could at least choose her own husband. She choose Finn after over many other suitors. He was kind and open minded, she fell in love with him. Clarke and he already set a date for the marriage, what Finn forgot to mention was that he was already engaged to another.

Clarke just could not handle it anymore. When she had finally decided to play by the rules of society, it had turned against her. Out of options, she just ran away. And that was how she got in this mess. She had kept hidden in the cargo hold. She had of course been stealing food, but only a few times. She did not dare to go farout of her hiding spot. Water was luckily kept close by her. The lack of decent food and vitamins had gotten her in this situation. She knew something had to change quickly, because otherwise she would not survive. She just hoped the ship got to its destination soon so she could get off it.


	2. Chapter 2

Her illness had gotten worse. There was a fever now and her teeth would not stop chattering. She wanted to sleep a bit, but was not able to. Another symptom of her stupid illness. Now she just sat there, teeth chattering, stomach grumbling and frozen to the bone. Suddenly she heard a noise. She shot up and scattered back. She heard heavy boots coming down the stairs. This was of course not uncommon as she was in the place where the stuff was stored. Nobody had ever seen her and she was not planning on chancing that today. She just had to keep quiet. Her stomach had other plans. As the boots came closer to her, her stomach growled louder. Clarke clamped her arms over her belly, trying to soften the noise.

This did not work unfortunately. She heard someone shout: "Who is there? Show yourself!" She absolutely did not want to do that, she knew what would happen. They would probably throw her of the boat of keelhaul her. Clarke was already ill, she would certainly not survive consequences like this. So coming out of her hiding place was definitely not an option. Now the only option was keeping quiet and praying the man did not see her. God must have been otherwise occupied because the prayer was not answered. The man stuck his head around the corner of the barrel she was behind and smiled at her. It was not a pleasant smile. The man that stood before her had greasy hair and looked like trouble. "Well, well, well, what do we have here?" he asked with a taunting voice. Clarke did not know what to do and just looked at him stubbornly. She was terrified, but she was not about to show that to this creepy stranger. He took her by the arm and mumbled to himself:"Captain Blake will be very content with me." Then louder he told her with a grin: "He will not be very pleased with you on the other hand."


	3. Chapter 3

The man dragged clarke away from her hiding spot and pushed her forward. Getting out of her hiding spot did not come as easy as getting there. When she got there she was healthy and well fed. Now she could only dream of those things. She stumbled forward over a few barrels and almost tripped. The man just shaked his head and gave her a disapproving look. Clarke frowned, it was not her fault she was ill. When she finally got out of the hiding spot she leaned against a barrel. The few seconds she had spent moving had exhausted her. She almost collapsed when the man took her by the arm. "Come on, we don't have all day" he said. He pushed her forward to the stairs. She fell on the ground. It didn't hurt, but she could not get up again. She was simply to sick to carry her own weight. The man looked so incredibly done when he sighed and picked her up. "Look I'm not planning on carrying you, but you can lean on me for support I guess." They got to the stairs slowly and she went up first. The man went up behind her catching her every time she slipped. Which happened quite a lot, so Clarke was grateful. Maybe he wasn't such an ass after all, and perhaps he'd even help her. It was worth a try.

"Hey," she said when she was halfway the long stairs," could you maybe consider letting me stay down here? I know you are a nice guy." He looked up with a surprised expression. "Do you know in how much trouble I'll be when the captain finds out I let you stay here? He already dislikes me, if he finds out about this I'm a dead man." "He does not have to know, please sir" she begged. The man looked at her with a sorry face. "They already know, people have been hearing noise for the last week and I was sent to investigate." he told her with an amused look on his face, " I'm sorry, but the captain will like me better if I turn you in and that's a opportunity I have to take." Clarke understood this, but could not help feeling resentment against this man. He was just doing his job, but she got the feeling that he also thought the whole situation was funny. Perhaps it was, but not to her.

She was trying to lengthen her life a bit more by stalling while climbing the stairs. She did every moment a bit slower than she could have. The man of course was on to her. "Lady, I know you're stalling, and as I've said before I don't have all day. Now get it over with or I'll get some of the nice men who work here to carry you. They haven't bathed in quite a time, so I would not chose that if I were you. Clarke thought about being carried by smelly men who hadn't seen a girl in a long time and decided against it.

The climbed the stairs pretty quickly for someone in her state and considering the amount of stairs. A boat has a few layers and all of them have low ceilings and stupid stairs that are hard to climb. Clarke had a lot of fun walking through the boat. Barely being able to stand and clinging to the man was exactly how she wanted to be seen. She just hoped she was almost at the Captain's room because she did not want these people to look at her anymore. Unfortunately the Captain's room was not in some private corner of the boat. She had to go through the entire ship and across the deck to get there. As is was day and the winds were rough most people were on the deck working, so at first Clarke did not see many people. But when she got on the deck all hell broke loose. The men working soon did not work anymore as they were distracted by her. A person that had kept hidden on the ship did not happen often but it was always a sight. The men eyed her curiously, as if they all wondered how she could have kept hidden this long. Clarke understood that, now that she'd seen how many people there actually were on the ship she wondered why she'd not been caught sooner. The man shouted at the workers that they should stop staring and go back to their jobs. It didn't really work, but Clarke felt more at ease because the men seemed a bit scared of him.

It looked like he wanted to get off the deck as bad as she wanted because all of a sudden they were walking fast. Clarke almost couldn't keep up with him and she tripped again. He caught her but didn't slow down. When they got to the Captain's chambers he started to slow down. He almost looked scared and with a slight hesitation he knocked on the door. "Who is it?", she heard a deep voice saying from inside the cabin. "John Murphy, Captain", the man next to her said with a small voice. He was really scared of the Captain and that meant nothing good for Clarke. The man inside sighed and said: "Come in Murphy". Clarke heard in the voice of the Captain that he did not like John. He seemed nice enough to her, and she wondered why the Captain did not like him. John pushed open the door and walked in, he dragged her along. The Captain sat at his desk not facing the door, it made the situation just a bit more awkward. John apparently thought so to because he eyed her awkwardly and then looked back at the Captain. He cleared his throat, "Uhm sir, I've found something you really might want to see." The Captain sighed dramatically and turned around. He looked at her and his eyed widened, he seemed confused and just stared for a while. Then he turned to John, "Murphy, would you be so kind to explain what is going on here?" he asked with a weary look.

 **So I just really love Murphy if you couldn't tell**


	4. Chapter 4

Murphy was scared, Clarke could see that. When the captain had asked him to explain what was going on Murphy must have realised that he also did not know what was going on. Murphy began to stammer: "Well captain, you see, it seems like this gal had been hidden on the ship." The captain raised an eyebrow: "We have been on open sea for three months now, how is it that I just hear about this now?" "Well, Murphy answered, we only just found out" The captain looked absolutely not impressed with Murphy:"Get out! You and the rest of the crew can figure out how the hell you did not know and answer back to me after I've handled this." Clarke could see that Murphy got out of the cabin as fast as he could without seeming like a wimp. The impression she got from this captain was getting more and more negative. She was definitly screwed.

Murphy was now out of the room and the captains full atention was directed at Clarke. He stared at her really intense, determined not to let him know she was frightened she stared back. She took him in from head to toe en made sure he knew it. She felt the tension ride, he obviously didn't like her cocky attitude. The captain was a handsome man in his mid twenties. Clarke wondered how one so young could be in charge of such an enormous ship. He suddenly cleared his throat which made Clarke snap out of her thoughts. "So", he bagan, "what do you think you are doing on my ship?" Clarke put her chin up to seem taller and lessen the height diffence between the two. "Well mister captain, I was trying to befriend the rats." She had totally fucked up. The captain frowned so deep she couldn't eve see his eyebrows anymore. There was a long and awkward silence. Clarke thought about all the possible ways she could die. Then the captain did something unpredictable, he smiled. "I hope the rats and you became great friends, because this crew honestly is not much better." Clarke let out a sigh of relief, he was nice? He saw her relief and smirked. "Oh you thought you were getting away with this? Well miss" Clarke interupted him: "Clarke Griffin, sir" The captain looked a bit more annoyed as he continued. "Miss Clarke, you are lucky I have more pressing matters at this moment so you are going to the cell. I'll have Murphy escort you, that little slime is probably listening at the door anyway. "Murphy, get your ass in here!" The captain was probably right about him listening at the door, because he came runnig in really fast. "Murphy, you will escort Clarke here to the cell that has the biggest rat problem and feed her." Murphy looked confused as to why a prisoner would get food as they didn't have a lot of food to begin with. The captain saw his look of confusion and explained himself: "I don't want her to die before I can come up with a suitable punishment, now get out of my eyes." Murphy nodded and dragged Clarke out of the cabin. "I will do as you asked Captain Blake," he said as he dragged Clarke out of the room.

Murphy took her to a nasty cell below deck. He made sure to put her in the one with the most rats. Clarke hated herself for having such a big mouth. Murphy gave her some food, Clarke took it and shoved it in her mouth. She was starving. Murphy looked at her with amazement, he had never seen one eat this fast. When she was done eating the bit of food he gave her she took a look at the cell. There was a total of five cells, two others were occupied by intimidating men. She was very hapy they were not next to her, but on the other side of the row. She couldn't help herself and asked Murphy what they'd done to get locked up. Murphy schrugged and told her to ask them herself. He then locked the door and walked away.


End file.
